I do not own "Warrior." It belongs to director Gavin O'Connor. And CCAC is short for Community College of Allegheny County, a community college in Pittsburgh.

Chapter Four: An Encounter

The manager at the Oldies Diner liked to insist that the form-fitting black dress "uniforms" the waitresses had to wear were a simple gimmick; a throwback to the 1950s soda fountain look. Jane felt differently. It wasn't this so much that bothered her but the fact that the manager seemed to hire only waitresses, and every one of them was under the age of thirty-two and under a size ten, with breasts just large enough to show even a little cleavage in their outfits. Just a gimmick, indeed.

It was safe to say that she despised waitressing. It bothered her having act like she wasn't completely repulsed by the creepy old man who always sat in her section and stared at her during the hours he spent each day in the diner over coffee and a single slice of pie or cake. It bothered her when drunken men who wanted a meal to soak up the alcohol in their systems seemed compelled to write their numbers down on their bills before leaving. It bothered her when people told her to take back a dish because it was too salty, wasn't salty enough, didn't have enough bacon bits sprinkled on top, etcetera. Hell with it. The entire job description got to her.

But it paid the bills and customers tipped better when their servers were dressed in something more creative than khakis and a restaurant tee-shirt.

Tonight was a particularly slow night. The creepy old man was gone for the evening—thank God—as well as everyone else in her section and her shift was going to end within twenty minutes, when the short hand struck eleven. She counted the seconds, sorting clean silverware and folding napkins in an empty booth. At least until her manager came up and said, "It's a ghost town here. You may as well go home for the night."

"Is that all right?" Jane asked, thinking, can I? Can I? Can I?

"Yeah. Go on home."

"Why are you changing out of your uniform? It's not like you work at a strip club." Courtney, one of the other waitresses, is also getting ready to quit for the evening.

From her place in the bathroom stall as she pulls up her jeans, she says, "Trust me, if you lived where I live and don't have a car, you'd be doing the same thing." She slips out of her (sensibly-low-heeled) shoes and into her sneakers. Just in case at some point she needs to run instead of walk.

"I can get changing shoes, but the dress isn't a problem."

"Yeah it is. It makes people think I have boobs." She comes out of the stall and slips on her jacket, stuffing her uniform and shoes into her bag. "Everyone wants a small, feminine target. Well, almost everyone."

Five nights a week Jane takes a bus from a block away from the diner and gets off at a stop six blocks away from her crappy one-room apartment in a part of town Courtney refers to as "the Anacostia of Pittsburgh." Coming from D.C. and having spent time in Anacostia before, Jane can safely say that that's an exaggeration. But only a little one. As a result, she keeps a can of mace in her jacket pocket when she walks those six blocks at night.

After a block or so she senses someone following her. Ignoring her better judgment, she glances behind her and sees that yes, in fact, there is a man following her: a White man with a gaunt face, a shaved head and an enormous tattoo on his neck, with a small swastika just above it. A skinhead. He's practically a poster-child for dangerous people to avoid day or night, and he's staring right at her. She starts walking faster, feeling for the mace in her jacket pocket and feeling its reassurance.

Behind her she hears the man's pace speed up to match hers and she tries to outpace him without giving him the impression that she's fleeing, but that's a losing battle. She gave him the satisfaction of her fear the second she looked back at him. And she is afraid. The fear spurs her to break into a run, going faster than she originally ever would have, but he's not going to give up. He catches up to her and grabs her by the arms.

So much for reaching for the can of mace.

She struggles all the same, because there's no way her body will cooperate with this person who has her arms pinned. She flails, squirms, stomps on one of his feet and he grunts and tightens his grip on her, closing in.

"Get the fuck away," she warns. And she inwardly winces. How the hell could she possibly think that she's the one calling the shots right now?

"That supposed to be a threat, sweetheart?" the man says, laughing.

She knows what to do. She's pretty sure she knows what to do. His grip is bruising her wrists but with a last spurt of strength she forces herself around in this person's grasp and brings her knee up hard and fast, not quite getting him in the place she needed to but along the inner thigh, very close, turning her head away as she hears him grunt and feels his hands fly away from her wrists. When she runs it's on pure adrenaline and complete terror that makes an elite sprinter out of her but she doesn't make it far.

How the hell was he able to catch up to me? She thinks as the man nearly falls on her, hold tighter than ever.

"Take my purse," she says, squeaks, croaks, her throat constricted. It won't be much of a loss; her wallet, cell phone and apartment key are in her jacket and jeans-pocket. All she has in her purse is her work uniform and matching shoes. "Take the fucking purse."

"No, I think I'll take more than that," the man hisses in her ear, and as he presses himself against her back she feels the butt of a gun against her side as he drags her to an alleyway. "Stupid cunt."

Her voice returns long enough for her to let out a two second scream that's cut short when the man forces a sweaty hand over her mouth and pushes her, face-first, into a wall, removing his hand just in time to avoid scraping it against the brick the way it scratches against Jane's face. "Now, just be quiet and it will all be over quickly." She feels something else that's certainly not a gun poke against the small of her lower back.

If there's anything her mother has ever stressed if such an event ever came up, it was that if you are still physically capable of screaming, scream. Better to get shot than to stay quiet and wait for things to get worse. She starts to scream again, voice muffled by the force of the side of her face pressed against the wall.

What neither of them noticed at this time of night was a man walking out of the gym across the street who has seen most of what's gone in in the last minute, and is making his way across the street. Neither of them sees this man or expects him to come up behind the skinhead with the gun just as he is about to strike the woman with it, or for this person grab the skinhead by the throat, yanking him backwards. From her place against the wall, Jane can't see a thing but when she's suddenly, inexplicably free she turns and sees a complete stranger yank the man with the gun back with enough force that the gun falls to the ground, and this guy punches him so hard across the jaw that there is a breaking sound that sounds even worse than it looks. The man who's just thrown the punch yanks the skinhead back up after he's crumpled the ground and punches him in the face with his other hand.

He then tells the skinhead who probably wants to know what happened to his gun to get lost and never pull that shit again and shoves him on his way. The gun-man, scuttling and clutching his jaw, is more than willing to comply.

Jane's heart is racing. She's terrified. She's exhilarated. She's just seen Clark Kent turn into Superman without once changing out of his sweatpants. She was about to get raped and probably worse by a man with a gun two blocks away from her apartment and instead she's looking at someone who's saved her ass (in more ways than one, she supposes) and perhaps her life. The moment she finds herself able to speak, she's babbling in a voice nearly a full octave higher than normal.

"Ohmigod, thank you. Thank you so much. I thought I was a goner back there. I…" She's breathless and sounds as if she's just sucked on a helium balloon but she doubts that really matters. For a moment she freezes, because it may just be the night or her imagination, but this man has some of the broadest shoulders she's ever seen supporting a thick neck. No wonder he was able to knock the guy's lights out. "You're big."

She blushes. That wasn't meant to come out. Thankfully, the man ignores it. "Are you all right?" he asks. "It looks like your face is bleeding a little."

Jane wipes her hand on the bridge of her nose, her cheek, and sure enough, there's a little blood. She doesn't give a shit about that right now. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm good. Scared shitless, but good. Thank you so much. I think you just saved my life." Her heart is pounding in her chest and she's still shaking but breath comes back to her, slowly but surely. "I was walking home from work…"

"How nearby are you?" he asks.

"About three blocks down," she says. She points in the direction of her apartment. "That way."

And the man says something that completely floors her. He says, "I'll walk you back."

She can feel a reddening at the tips of her ears. She's sure she looks like a deer caught in the headlights when she stammers, "I, uh, that, you don't have to—"

The man seems to interpret her reaction as fear that he'll attack her as well. "Don't worry. Don't worry. I'm heading in that direction, too. There's nothing more to it than that."

"I, well, um, thank you." Oooh. Such a clever response.

They start walking. "Where do you work?" the man asks.

Her brain is still playing catch-up. "The, ah, the Oldies Diner. It's this place on West Avenue with a fifties theme. I'm a waitress," she adds with a little embarrassment. "How about you? How did you find yourself here just in the nick of time?"

"I was coming out of the gym across the street," he tells her. "Where I work." He looks at her, gives her the once-over. "You starting to feel better? You aren't shaking as much."

"Yeah. Thanks…I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name?"

The man says, "It's Tommy."

"Oh. Well, hello, Tommy, I'm Jane." She stops and extends her hand.

As he shakes it he says, "You're not from Pittsburgh, are you?"

"I'm not. I'm from D.C."

"D.C? Washington, D.C?" The way he pronounces it, it sounds a little more like Worshington.

"Yeah, Washington, D.C. I grew up just outside of Dupont Circle, actually, not the White House or anything. Spent some time in Southeast D.C. and a little in Columbia Heights."

"What brought you to East Pittsburgh? College, or something?"

Jane hesitates. She's so not going to go into that with a stranger. "No, not college. I mean, I take classes part-time at CCAC, but that's not why I'm here. There were circumstances that brought me to Pittsburgh and there was really nothing for me back in D.C, so I figured I may as well stay."

"A man?" She almost hears a grin in Tommy's voice, and she finds the idea so ridiculous she can't help but laugh.

"No, definitely wasn't a man. Or a woman. Or any person. It was more to get away from where I'd been. But you are from Pittsburgh?"

"Yeah. Born and raised. I moved away when I was fourteen and came back several months ago." He says this in a tone of voice that adds a silent request not to ask any further into it, and she doesn't. Instead she looks over at him again. He looks to be in his late twenties, early thirties. He's not tall, but he still has a large frame and cuts an imposing figure.

"So you work at that gym. Are you a personal trainer?"

"Nah. I got injured not that long ago, and I'm not really certified as a personal trainer anyway. I just help keep the place running right."

"You got injured?" He sure as hell doesn't look injured.

"Dislocated my shoulder two and a half months ago." He hesitates for a mighty long time before elaborating. "I was helping move some shit down stairs, something slipped, I fell, well, you know how it goes." He's looking down, looking kind of embarrassed. She can't quite believe it. The man who just punished the hell out of a guy's jaw can't have gotten injured so recently and still be able to something like that.

"I would not have been able to tell," Jane says after a moment. "Shit, is your shoulder all right? Which one was it?"

With his left arm he slowly rubs his right. "My right. And it's fine. I didn't just undo two months of healing. Just make sure you don't get into that position again, all right?"

"I wasn't planning on it."

"Can you find someone to drive you home from now on or something?"

Jane winces. "Hate to say it, but probably not. I'll ask around." They near her apartment. "Hey, listen, Tommy. I know it's not much, but the diner where I work, it's a twenty-four hour diner. I work two to eleven Monday through Friday. Feel free to come by sometime for a meal or something. On me."

Tommy looks as if he's about to smile, but can't quite make it. "What if I order the most expensive thing on the menu?" he asks.

Jane smiles back. For the life of her she didn't think she'd smile so soon after what happened tonight. "Well, if I worked at a fancy restaurant that offered lobster and caviar I might just be a little intimidated. But I'd still stand by my offer."

She stops on the sidewalk outside her apartment complex. "Thank you again. So much. And, you know, like I said, feel free to stop by when the mood strikes you."

Tommy nods and glances at the apartment. "Yeah. I will. Good night." Again, he looks as if he almost smiles and heads off.

A superhero doesn't need a fancy skintight suit. All he needs is a pair of sweatpants and an East Pittsburgh accent.

As Jane heads up to her apartment room, she thinks that she doesn't believe in fate and, despite AA's emphasis on belief in a higher power, isn't a big fan of divine intervention. Still, it's surreal. She could have been badly harmed tonight were it not for some of the luckiest timing and just the right person to come along.

F

"How are you today?" David asks as Tommy comes in for another physical therapy session. He's looking better and better. He's made sure throughout the healing process to not let his body fall any further than he could help from where he'd been before and losing a fair amount of definition was unavoidable, but the definition in his shoulders and back is starting to return to its former state. It'll be a while before he gets his body to look exactly the way it did the day of the fight, but he's already progressing.

"I'm good. I threw a couple punches yesterday that knocked a guy out and probably fucked up his jaw. One of them with my left arm, but still."

David freezes, thinking for a moment that he's heard wrong. He's one second away from killing one of his own clients. He takes a deep breath, hoping Tommy's just fooling with him. "You were in a match? You're trying to spar again already?"

Tommy shakes his head. "No. It wasn't with a fighter. It was at night. I came out of the gym and saw this guy attacking this girl. It looked like he was going to do something worse than just take her money. It's not like I could call the cops or something, she needed help right away."

"That's the best reason to throw a punch at someone," David says, and slowly eases up. Tommy seems to be moving all right, but he'd be lying if he told Tommy there wouldn't be any repercussions.

"She was walking home from work. A cute girl is always going to be in danger walking alone at night in that part of the 'Burgh."

"A cute girl, huh?" David teases him, and lets up to move onto something more important. "But how's your shoulder feeling?"

"Good. Kinda sore. I guess it hurt when I punched that guy, but with the adrenaline going, it was harder to notice. It's letting up. I mean, it was just one punch with this arm-the harder punch was with my left-and it wasn't against a professional fighter or anything. He wasn't expecting to get hit."

"Don't pull that shit again," David says. "'Kay. Stretch your arm out like this," he demonstrates.

As he does so: "Hey, you ever been to a place called the 'Oldies Diner'?"

"The place on West Avenue? Yeah. Sort of a gimmicky little place that serves 1950s American diner food. Not as gimmicky as that place in 'Pulp Fiction', but the same kind of ballpark. Why?"

"It's where this girl works. She invited me to come by for a free meal."

David grins. "Go for it, man. The food's pretty good. Personally, I like their steak, but seriously, if a nice-looking girl offers you a free meal, go for it. It'll give you something better to do than completely disregard all the rules I set out for you. You set yourself back at least a week. And it'll be even longer before you can do plank push-ups again."